I object to putting all of the "keep the merger" options first. Since the entire point of this poll is that the merger has been challenged by WikiMedia personnel, I think the order should be reversed. Instead of the struck-out idea they should be sorted by relevance. Current alleged status quo first, and the immediately preceding status second. WPians are smart enough that they don't need all of the merge options bunched together and all of the don't-merge options together before or after the merge options. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC) Updated 22:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

And put the "I dunno" options at the end. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: "compromise reached by Jimbo and SlimVirgin" — Since when does one random admin have more authority, weight or importance than everyone else? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggest replacing "SlimVirgin" with "merger proponents". — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

She doesn't carry more weight than anyone else. She just happened to be the person who Jimbo tried to work out a temporary solution with. Maybe I'd be listed there if I had managed to work out a temporary solution first. (Instead, I took to badgering him about various things, including the creation of this poll. ;D) Picaroon 00:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe true but does not resolve the objection. The level of control that that editor in particular has been trying to assert over the text is disturbing enough without the poll implying that that this is some kind of vote to go with Jimbo's ideas vs. SV's. The discussion is quite broader than that. I haven't yet made the suggested edit myself because I thought it deserved some further discussion, but I'm not very far off from making it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

What can I say? SlimVirgin was a proponent of the merger and has been involved for some time now. However, I don't suspect anyone will mind if you remove the mention of her. Picaroon 00:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. I think it just puts the wrong spin on things, and could lead to WP:OWN bickering later on. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that SV has reverted this change to keep her/his/its name in position as it was. I don't think I need to comment further. I'm going to re-revert it because the user in question has a long history of not explaining edits and reverts and failing to address questions about edits/reverts, whether they appear in edit summaries, article talk pages, or user's own talk page. Come out, come out, where ever you are. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, please don't use this as an opportunity to cause trouble. There is simply no trouble to cause. Jimbo and I came up with a compromise position, which actually works pretty well, because there was never any intention to deprecate V and NOR; I was heavily involved in writing and maintaining those pages so I'd be one of the last people to want to see them forgotten. Please try to move forward in a constructive way. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 08:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I've written I think 5 responses to this in various tones, and just can't seem to get it where it will sound right. I'll just have to summarize. And I won't even wikilink to any guideline and policy pages. Just because you don't agree with my stance on the issue and aren't happy that I'm criticising what I see as patterns of behavior on your part does not mean that I am here to "cause trouble" or am in fact "causing trouble", nor that I am being anti-constructive, or deconstructive, or unconstructive, or destructive, or whatever you envisioned the opposite of "constructive" to be in the context in which you used that word. I didn't come here to fight with you. I did happen to notice very rapidly when I did come here that you are personally exerting an enormous amount of influence over this alleged policy and its better-accepted predecessors, and I object to that level of influence. If you'd care to address that, I'd be happy to continue the conversation. If you just care to charaterize me as a "trouble"-"causing" non-"constructive" pee-on, then we should probably take that to user pages to the extent it should be discussed further at all. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 08:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Again, just to be really clear on this, I'm not alleging bad faith on anyone's part. I just think there's a lack of balance. That a level of deference is being granted to people who have "worked for five months" on this merge, and that incoming opinions on the matter are being devalued. Please do note that I am not bringing up WP:OWN. While I said a while back that I could detect a whiff of it in the air, that's as far as I've ever gone with that line of reasoning. I think that WP:OWN accusations as such are accusations of bad faith. Having been subject to a BF accusation just now myself, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I'm not sure how to get this across in a nice, fuzzy-bunny way, is all. Some of us are not happy at all about WP:ATT's coming into being, others are not happy about its present wording, either because it does not accurately reflect the origin policies, or changes them too much in this way or that, and others are not happy about the fact that they're merged at all (process questions be damned). There are numerous viewpoints on this, probably 9 at least, just from the basic math and without accouting for minor variations. I don't think it is unnreasonable for some to have issues with the process and asking hard questions of those in effective control of the process. I think (to really to get to the point) that all parties involved are entitled to edit summaries that adequately explain their rationales, or which direct parties to an actually extant talk-page rationale that adequately addresses the issue. That largely has not been happening around here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, this tone is completely unacceptable. Slim has worked very hard on this policy, and worked out the compromise with Jimbo. I don't understand why you want to remove her name, but I oppose your doing so strongly. You must be aware that it will upset her, and I just don't understand why it's so important to you to do that. I know that policy discussions can get heated, and the policies concerned here have from time to time resembled battlefields, but it's not necessary. Deep breath, calm yourself, move on in a constructive fashion. Grace Note 08:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Notwithstanding the note below, I see in retrospect how the "come out where ever you are" commentary may have sounded nasty. It was really meant to be silly, but, alas, what seems funny/goofy/harmless when written can seem otherwise when read by third parties. D'oh. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow you. I'm transgressing AGF because I (and I'm not alone in this) am raising issues about over-control and lack of trasparency in this policy merge, meanwhile I get blatantly attacked as a "trouble maker" and un/not/anti-/something/de-"constructive"? I'm not implying any bad faith of SV's part. I objected (something like 2/3 of a day ago) against making the upcoming straw poll be about "SlimVirgin vs. Jimbo"; that's all. I got reverted in a manner that (habitually, in my view, though that is not the topic here) provided no justification for the revert, so I undid it, and explained the rationale for doing so. The AGF accusation here seems unwarranted and defensive. Not to mention completely missed the point. Instead of actually getting an explanation this time, I instead get told I'm an AGF transgressor. Am I expected to suddenly stop questioning anything or having an opinion at all from now on? Why is SV's cow so sacred? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 08:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't see what you mean at all. There is no Jimbo v. SlimVirgin. Quite the opposite: we came up with the most recent position together. But it's really best to forget the personalities and focus on the issues, and I'll hope you'll do that. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Gahhh... That was the entire point of my edit. Remove the personalities and just make it be about the issues. Before I got jumped on, my next edit was going to be removal of Jimbo's name. (See the edit summary of that page today if you don't believe me. EVERYthing I've done with that page has been stepwise and in series. I just happened to have to go to a pool league match tonight, so I didn't get home until several hours later, only to find I'm being accused of AGF and maybe NPA violations. Great. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

PS: Just to be clear, if I get re-reverted on this, I won' t fight it. I'm just aiming for neutralty and balance here (see my edits to the poll page today). If no one but me sees a neutrality and balance problem with the wording I'm grumbling about then I am probably mis-grumbling, and will shut up about it. I'm tenacious, but I'm not stupid. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 08:57, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

PPS: I went to do a self-revert on this with edit-summary of "Self-revert; while I don't agree with prefered text, majority if not full consensus seems to be for it", but got edit-conflicted as someone beat me to it. Anyway, "just for the record", I'm trying to play nicer here than I think I'm being credited for. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I thnk you've handled yourself fine here. You gone to great lengths to explain yourself in a reasonable and convincing manner, and that is good in my book. Don't agonise too much over this. Flare-ups happen. Carcharoth 14:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused. How many options are there to vote on? It's difficult to tell at the moment. And when voting and discussion opens, can we support more than one option? Carcharoth 23:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, there are too many options. I say we should remove the various "I don't know/neutral" options seeing as they don't really serve to identify any trends or ideas among respondents. I'll trim them now. Picaroon 00:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur. We could also simply remove the stuff about WP:RS and save that for another discussion/poll. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Definitely too confusing. My proposed scheme would be a much simpler wording:

Option 1

Wikipedia:Attribution is the only policy, Wikipedia:Verification and Wikipedia:No original research are redirected to sections of it that discuss the concerns formerly considered by those pages

Option 2

Wikipedia:Attribution is the primary policy, with Wikipedia:Verification and Wikipedia:No original research as subsidiary policies that provide simplified explanations of the concepts involved, and refer readers to Wikipedia:Attribution for further information. This is the current status quo.

Option 3

Wikipedia:Attribution is marked as historical, Wikipedia:Verification and Wikipedia:No original research are restored to full policy status

The current scheme, with sections and subsections is way too hard to follow. I don't think the option of keeping WP:ATT but leaving WP:V and WP:NOR as the primary policies stands a chance of success, it being an extremely unwieldly option. Better just to mark ATT as historical and be done with. If absolutely necessary, it could be done as a sub-option of option 3 in my list, as it is a close variant, but I think it's better to avoid those nested choices. JulesH 08:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Just for the record, I removed a bunch of subtle (and surely unintentional) bias from the voting categories. I won't be watching this every minute of every day, so others please be alert for any additional skewing. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to chill out a bit and remind yourself that everyone involved is trying to do their best for Wikipedia, even if they seem misguided to you. Grace Note 08:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have to note that that wasn't a very graceful comment. ;-) I went out of my way to specifically imply that the bias was not intentional. I think we may be having a simple culture clash. There is nothing malevolent at all about pointing out bias in a survey; it's just part of making the survey more sound (in social science terms; in hard science terms they are all meaningless nonsense of course). Anyway, while I do have my irritable disagreements to air, this isn't one of them. Please do not overgeralize discomfiture with one or two or seventeen things I've said to blanket opposition to everthing I say. PS: I don't think anyone here is misguided. The full extent of my complaint is over-control by a limited number of parties, which is self-resolveable with more WPian involvement. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

We have three fundamental, distinct, but related doctrines, or content policies: verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view. The question is, do we need three pages (one for each doctrine), two (one page might cover two of them), one (consolidate the lot on one page called "fundamental content policies") or four (one for each plus a summary of the lot and explanation of how they interrelate, called "summary of fundamental content policies"). There is no doctrine of "attribution". Attributing is a practice that is often (but not always) helpful for avoiding breaches of the three doctrines. The options should reflect the possibilities of how many pages we might need. Metamagician3000 08:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your summary. We have two "doctrines," attribution and NPOV. If one violates attribution, this may be either because the work is original research or it may simply have the undesirable consequence that it becomes unverifiable (i.e., impossible to distinguish from original research). JulesH 08:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This implies that "no original research" and "verifiability" are the same thing, but they are not and never were. Even the existing attribution change does not claim they are (or I hope it doesn't - it talks about various key principles). This is the kind of confusion that happens when you try to merge what are really distinct ideas into one policy page. Metamagician3000 09:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Attribution is not a "doctrine", "policy" or anything else. It is an idea (heading towards "if it is not attributed then delete it") which a small group of editors have developed and are trying to make policy but for good reasons have not achieved anything approaching consensus. --Henrygb 11:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

• Actually we have several other "doctrines", including the WP:GFDL, our policy against using copyrighted material, our habit of being ethical to living people, and ideas such as that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. >Radiant< 11:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, AGF as well. I wouldn't want to downplay fundamental ideas about user interaction or intellectual property, or anything else. But the three fundamental content doctrines are interrelated (yet doing distinct jobs) and very important. I guess BLP can now be thought of as the fourth, but it has application only to some articles. Metamagician3000 13:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
    • There's no such thing as "three fundamental content doctrines". There's a bunch of policies, and a bunch of founding principles, several of either relating to content. There are no "layers" of importance among different policies. >Radiant< 13:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Is WP:TRIFECTA still around? That might be the reasoning for some people thinking of three core polices. I know that is where I got the idea from. As for founding principles. Do we have Wikipedia:Founding principles, or is that a meta page? Actually, looking at those pages, I see that the trifecta is something different again. I might have been thinking of Wikipedia:Five pillars. The trio mentioned here are at the top of Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset, while {{Wikipedia principles}} also includes links to meta:Foundation issues and Wikipedia:List of policies. Carcharoth 14:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit concerned there isn't an option which clearly equates to "put things back how things were a while ago before people started trying to do better". --BozMo talk 09:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Unless I've missed something, I think that is precisely what "No merger, WP:A tagged as historical" means. If it doesn't then it needs editing, because I'm absolutely certain this is what it was intended to mean. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:29, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

How on earth is this going to help deciding anything? We've had lengthy and many discussions about ATT. And we've had Jimbo saying that those three pages should not be merged. To both points, a poll is irrelevant. >Radiant< 09:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree massively with first two sentences. As to the third, JW recommended the poll after the fact, so I'm not sure I see a way around that one. As to fourth sentence, I also concur, but I think the horse is already out of the gate, so the question is about to become forensic. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 10:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, you could MfD the poll page, but that would be silly. Carcharoth 14:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed (but was reverted) the words "Yes" and "No" from the options because I found them to be either confusing or biased... "Yes" and "No" are answers to a question... but there isn't a question stated above the options to which a yes/no answer should be given. Without such a question, prefacing the options with a positive or negative word gives a positive or negative bias to the option.

Turn it around and you will see what I mean. Since this poll is in response to Jimbo saying he does not like ATT, we just as easily could say:

• "No, the current version of ATT is acceptable, RS/NOR/V should be explanatory"
• "Yes, RS/NOR/V should remain separate, ATT isn't needed"

My point being that the choices end up being the same, but phrased from a different perspective (ie implicitly supportive of the idea of dumping ATT instead of keeping it). Why not just state the options in a neutral tone without the "Yes" or "No"? Blueboar 14:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)